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Reason columnist Tim Cavanaugh discusses the Georgia/Russia/South Ossetia conflict of 2008 and the Georgia-biased misinformation spewed by the Obama and McCain campaigns, former McCain foreign policy advisor Randy Scheunemann‘s conflict of interest, how the U.S. media continued to get the South Ossetia story wrong for months, evidence that Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s attack was a spontaneous “loose canon” event and not the result of an April Glaspie-style wink and nod and how Georgia’s military was funded and trained by U.S. advisors (who may have seen combat action against Russian forces).

Cavanaugh has worked as the online editor of the Los Angeles Times and, for much of the 2000s, he served as Reason.com’s Web editor. Prior to coming to work for Reason, Cavanaugh edited the late, lamented Suck, which was arguably the first, and was indisputably the most hated, daily content site on the web. He has also worked at a variety of daily and weekly newspapers, trade magazines, and websites.

Cavanaugh’s articles have appeared in The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Beirut Daily Star, San Francisco Magazine, Mother Jones, Agence France-Presse, Wired, Newsday, Salon, Orange County Register, The Rake magazine, and countless alternative and community papers too embarrassing to mention. His own site, The Simpleton, gets updated once every blue moon.

The Soviets organized the Free Pole Army from their Polish prisoners, even arming them (though not well), and then sending them out of Russia, where eventually they saw action at Monte Casino, and in many areas afterward.

There was a real shortage of officers in the Soviet Free Polish Army training camps obviously. When asked about it by a Polish commander, Beria–was it?–is supposed to have said, "In that case we made a fatal error."